Description
Porta Ticinese is one of Milan's six great gates, opened in the Spanish bastions that no longer exist. It stands in the middle of Piazza XXIV Maggio, where Corso di Porta Ticinese meets the Darsena and the Navigli, with Luigi Cagnola's neoclassical columns and two toll houses.
The Milanese called it Porta Cicca, from the Spanish "chica": small. It was in fact the smallest of the city's gates. Yet today's gate, with its columns, is anything but small: the name is older than it is.
It goes back to the Spanish bastions of the sixteenth century. On the same axis, toward the center, there had already been a Roman gate and a medieval one, all on the road to Pavia.
The gate you see today is by Luigi Cagnola, built between 1802 and 1814 in the neoclassical style, one of the finest examples of this taste in Milan. For a few years it was called Porta Marengo, in honor of Napoleon's victory.
Then Napoleon fell. In 1815, with the wars over, a new Latin dedication was carved into it: "to the liberating peace of the peoples."
The gate also had a less solemn purpose: it straddles a ditch outside the Spanish walls, to force anyone entering the city to pay the toll.
Don't miss the columns and Cagnola's two toll houses, best seen without hurry, and, next to the gate, the Red Oak, a monumental tree of Lombardy, planted in memory of the fallen of the Great War.
Two Milanese traditions still pass through here: the procession of the Three Kings at Epiphany, headed for Sant'Eustorgio, and the entry into the city of every new archbishop.
Going up the street toward the center, you come to the medieval gate, the columns of San Lorenzo and the Carrobbio, where the Roman gate stood on the Via Ticinensis, the road that led to Pavia. In dialect, nearby Corso San Gottardo was the "cheesemakers' borough," for its many dairies.
The Milanese called it Porta Cicca, from the Spanish "chica": small. It was in fact the smallest of the city's gates. Yet today's gate, with its columns, is anything but small: the name is older than it is.
It goes back to the Spanish bastions of the sixteenth century. On the same axis, toward the center, there had already been a Roman gate and a medieval one, all on the road to Pavia.
The gate you see today is by Luigi Cagnola, built between 1802 and 1814 in the neoclassical style, one of the finest examples of this taste in Milan. For a few years it was called Porta Marengo, in honor of Napoleon's victory.
Then Napoleon fell. In 1815, with the wars over, a new Latin dedication was carved into it: "to the liberating peace of the peoples."
The gate also had a less solemn purpose: it straddles a ditch outside the Spanish walls, to force anyone entering the city to pay the toll.
Don't miss the columns and Cagnola's two toll houses, best seen without hurry, and, next to the gate, the Red Oak, a monumental tree of Lombardy, planted in memory of the fallen of the Great War.
Two Milanese traditions still pass through here: the procession of the Three Kings at Epiphany, headed for Sant'Eustorgio, and the entry into the city of every new archbishop.
Going up the street toward the center, you come to the medieval gate, the columns of San Lorenzo and the Carrobbio, where the Roman gate stood on the Via Ticinensis, the road that led to Pavia. In dialect, nearby Corso San Gottardo was the "cheesemakers' borough," for its many dairies.